Coming Soon: Your Bastardized Childhood Memories!

Perhaps it’s just a matter of timing. Like it or not, I am now of an age where my cherished childhood memories have come up for recycling. Movie adaptations of books are nothing new, but what began as a trickle in my teens has risen to a flood in my 20s, and time has not softened the blow of seeing these stories re-vamped for the 21st Century. On the contrary, as I cling to these last vestiges of my rapidly receding childhood, these new ‘improved’ versions become that much more personal.

Here is the dilemma: I am torn between excitement for a chance to revisit an old favorite and terror that what I see will be a poor substitution for what I knew and loved. Worse still is the certainty that whatever image I see will replace what I imagined a child, and I will find myself unable to recall it as it once was.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was the first of the bunch to really hit home. My mother read this book to me and my siblings, a chapter at a time, as we went to bed. I remember burrowing into my covers to listen, then having nightmares about the White Witch, and now I can’t think of that time in my life without superimposing Tilda Swinton’s face on the story.

I heard Bridge to Terabithia in the same way, in mom-installments, and decided I couldn’t bear seeing CGI versions (or computer animated, or whatever, is there a difference? I don’t know. I read books.) of the fantastical creatures I already saw in my head. Also, I heard that the girl doesn’t die at the end of the movie, like she does in the book, and f@*k that. Maybe kids were just tougher in those days (see: the scary Sesame Street), but that is way too much to change for the sake of coddling children or allaying the fears of over-protective parents.

Then there was The Golden Compass, part of Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy, and maybe one of the most hyped movies ever. To be honest, I never read it, but I heard a lot of indignant 20-somethings rant on the subject. For me, the last straw was The Dark is Rising, the title book of a series I absolutely adored in elementary school. It was one of those books I read over and over again, it was mystical and terrifying and there was no way I was going to see some cleaned-up, nonsense interpretation of it.

I guess it begs several questions: are there really no new stories under the sun? Or is this just a brilliant marketing tactic: those of us who loved them as children will see them for nostalgic value, and a new generation will see them with new expectations. But really, if a story is good, must it be covered again in a new medium? By all means, attempt it, but a little respect for the original wouldn’t hurt.

Or maybe I’m just being a baby who doesn’t want to leave her baby-hood behind.